Ten years of dull, dark pain, understandable only to a mother who has lost a daughter. An 11-year-old girl torn from her mother's embrace on a hot, playful morning just meters from the beach on Viale Delle Sirene in Santa Margherita di Pula, a stretch of sea that suddenly became the scene of one of the most atrocious tragedies.

A dive to get back to shore, the propeller of the yacht the little girl had been on suddenly starts spinning, the boat swerves and overwhelms those around her. The screams, the fear. The attempt to intervene by her father Andrea, a family of entrepreneurs active in the nightclub world (they owned the Eurogarden in Assemini). The most tragic ending.

Shocking

It was July 9, 2015, ten years ago, and Letizia Trudu lost her life in front of shocked beachgoers and a heartbroken parent. Her mother, Federica Fois, was at work. A phone call, a desperate scream, the phone flying, the fall to the ground, the help, her getting up and rushing to the car, accompanied by a colleague who couldn't leave her alone at that moment. Then the reckless rush toward the abyss, the world spinning around her, her sanity fading. And then the tears, the funeral, the emotion of relatives, friends, acquaintances, and even strangers who inevitably share a tragedy like this.

Many years have passed, and the subsequent trial (a rigorous yet necessary process) has also been filed, with the first-instance conviction of the vessel's captain. They say time heals certain wounds. Perhaps. Or perhaps not. However, there are those who, even in this pain, partially metabolized, manage to see a light, something that can give hope and optimism.

The thought

"She lives on in our memories, in our thoughts, in the little things that remind us of her. In her sister's smile, in the moments when we seem to still smell her scent, in the strength we must find every day to honor her memory." Federica Fois is a mother who survived. A woman who survived only out of love for her other daughter, who was 9 years old at the time: today she is an adult and a few weeks ago she matured.

And it's with her that she writes a letter, "In memory of Letizia, ten years later," addressed to the little girl she lost, to anyone who wants to read and share it, or perhaps just to themselves. To those who truly know what it meant to face that day and the thousands of days that followed.

"Ten years have passed, yet it seems like yesterday," she explains. "Ten years since that day that shattered our lives, taking away our beloved daughter and sister. A young life full of dreams and possibilities that fate chose to cut short too soon, leaving a void that no words, no embrace, no time can fill. Letizia was a light, our light, a pure soul, full of hope and dreams she never had the time to realize. She had her whole life ahead of her, yet, in an instant, that life was taken away. She lost her future; we lost a fundamental part of ourselves. Her absence accompanies us every day, like a shadow that never leaves us."

The void

A sudden void that left us stunned and devastated. "The deafening silence of his absence is a wound that won't heal, a pain that accompanies us every day. It has robbed us of our serenity and left us with an anguish that turns into fear, in that awareness that nothing will ever be the same again." Trying to move on "has been a tiring journey, full of obstacles, where every step required sacrifice. We had to find new balances, rebuild a torn family, learn to live with a part of ourselves that is no longer there. It wasn't easy to trust life again, to open ourselves to others." But "we tried every day. For ourselves, for Letizia, for her memory." A "difficult" journey, made of new beginnings and new failures, of problems and complicated moments.

Eternal love

But "despite everything, Letizia lives on. She lives in our memories, in our thoughts, in the little things that remind us of her. She lives in her sister's smile, in the moments when we seem to still smell her perfume, in the strength we must find every day to honor her memory." So over time, that void fills with memories. Beautiful ones. "Our love, we will continue to carry you with us, to live for you and with you in our hearts. And even if the world has disappointed us, even if pain has changed us, we will never allow your memory to be obscured. You are and always will be our star, the one who guides us even in the darkest nights. Ten years without you, never a day without loving you." Then the letter ends. "With eternal love, your mother and your sister."

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